1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to computer systems and more specifically to browsing of dynamic World Wide Web (WWW) pages.
2. Description of Related Art
The WWW and the Internet are widely used for the dissemination of information contained in web pages. A web page is a file on a computer system containing information for display or other presentation to a user. Web pages are typically written in hyper-text markup language (HTML) and contain references to associated text, graphics, and other multimedia files. A system for accessing web pages includes several parties and components. A content author creates web pages of information. A server system stores the web pages, including their content and possibly executable scripts embedded in the web pages, and accepts requests for access to the web pages. A client system executing a browser program generates requests for web pages that are sent to the server system. The client system and the server system are typically connected via a computer network (e.g., the Internet or a company intranet). The server system retrieves the requested web pages and forwards them to the browser program on the client system for viewing by the user of the client system.
Some web pages on the server system can interact dynamically with the user operating the client system. For example, the server can provide different content of a web page (such as an advertisement) based on demographic information gathered from the user. As another example, the server can consult databases of information stored on the server or on another accessible computer system and return the results of the database queries based on input from the user. Examples of dynamic web page technology include the Active Server Page technology from Microsoft Corporation and the server-based JavaScript.TM. scripting technology from Netscape Communications Corporation. These technologies allow dynamic web pages to be built and returned to the user, however, they are focused on user/server interactions such as generating a query to a database. Web pages do not currently model the dynamics of the server system nor the server-content author relationship very well. In a server system, the only dynamic information available returned to the user is that the requested web page could not be loaded (i.e., an error condition). The server-content author relationship is not modeled at all. For example, the server cannot return different web pages if the content author is currently connected to the Internet (i.e., the author is "on-line"). Furthermore, the server does not rely on any internal or external factors when determining which web page to return to the client system as a result of a user request.
Thus, an improved method of accessing dynamic web pages is desired that overcomes the deficiencies and limitations of the prior art.